CMC

By: Sapadu

A/N: ALLRIGHT! So, I've started re-editing this old fic... it started off as JUST a fanfiction of the Count of Monte Cristo taking place in Star Wars... my god, what have I DONE?

So, yes – I'm revising these chapters and touching things up as we go... because this damn thing has taken me six years to write, and in that time, my skill as a writer, my influences in writing, and my ideas and perspectives have changed. They probably will still continue to evolve, but right now, the shift is so radical that I really did need to go in and adjust this. To start, major plotholes and dangling characters and ideas will be fixed. For another, themes will be adjusted to consistent levels. Finally... I'll be getting rid of the Author's Notes I made through most of these, because I'm rereading and seeing just how obnoxious they can be. If there are things you notice that seem like glaring errors or that stand out, particularly, feel free to PM me and I'll take your input into account while I'm doing these edits so... yeah, here we go!

Prologue: The Big Bang – A theoretical explosion that created all space, matter, and time as we know it.

It was amazing- Mara had never really wondered what death felt like to people who were poisoned. The times when she had rarely tried to imagine it, she's always thought of poison being like acid that burned you inside and out.

Apparently, poisons that caused paralysis were base types.

First, her fingertips went numb. Then, all feeling in them ceased, as her knuckle joints felt the same numbness. Her toes were going through the same treatment, only quicker, as the digits were shorter.

All the while, those horrible, horrible eyes were staring down at her. Haughty. Jeering.

Triumphant.

The brown eyes of her nephew had turned into the red and yellow eyes of her worst nightmare.

She could feel it- the boy who had once been Jacen had been pushed aside and replaced by this monster. And now, Mara could feel his exalted glee and pride that he had toppled her, like the proverbial cat that ate the canary in a very well-guarded cage.

The poison made it's last rounds into her inner organs, paralyzing even her involuntary muscles, as though it was saving the best for last. Mara forced her jaw to move, just as the poison closed in on her heart and lungs.

"You're just as vile as he was..." She whispered.

The self-satisfied look on Jacen's face faded.

"Who?" He asked, as though he almost feared the answer.

Mara couldn't smile, but she knew what she was going to say- dying or not, she was still Mara Jade Skywalker, damn it. Death was no defeat- not if she could take down her enemy with her... at least, in a sense.

"...Palpatine..." She breathed.

That one word, and Mara could feel a shock wave of anger, and then frustration, go through Jacen's whole body at that moment- anger at her words, anger at the truth behind them, and frustration that he had be trumped by her, despite the fact that she was dying.

In terms of the game, Mara knew she'd won.

Her heart stopped.

And Mara sent a wave through the Force to her beloved son and husband, as though running a hand over Luke's hair, and whispering one last word to her son.

~.~.~.~

Becoming one with the Force, oddly enough, felt far different from anything Mara had believed. It was as though she wasn't Mara Jade Skywalker – or, for that matter, Mara Jade, or anyone else, anymore. Everything else seemed somehow a part of her, and she could see – even though she had no eyes – every star as it's own little birth of fire and gases, as it was, as it burnt out and disappeared; every planet as its waters ran dry and became cold and barren, but as the first of plants and creatures began to crawl along; she could hear – despite there being no sound – each whisper, word, cry, laugh of every living thing; and even the crackle of fires that burned, or the gusts of wind, or even the pop of the cessation of noise as though traveling from a planet's surface into the outermost reaches of space in a second.

And she knew...

"Again."

"Not again."

And then...